Tuesday, October 4, 2016

11:00 AM

After a month of positive ads, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson today unveiled his first attack ad of the fall, charging Dem rival Russ Feingold has a “history of not telling the truth.”

The spot contrasts Feingold’s pledge in 1992 to raise the majority of his money from Wisconsin with his 2016 campaign, in which out-of-state contributions have comprised most of his large donations.

A narrator opens the spot asking if viewers have seen Feingold’s ads attacking Johnson, saying “They’re simply not true” and Feingold has a “history of not telling the truth going back to 1992.”

The ad then shows a clip of Feingold from his first Senate bid in which he stands before his garage and says, “I will rely on Wisconsin citizens, not out of staters, to pay for this campaign.”

The spot then shows another clip of Feingold from that campaign as he says, “I’m making a pledge for the future.”

The narrator then says 70 percent of “Feingold’s money has come from out of state.”

It then cuts to a clip of Feingold at Marquette University last year saying, “When I said in 1992, whenever I said that I would get a majority of my contributions from Wisconsin citizens, I made that pledge for that term.”

The spot cuts back to the 1992 clip of Feingold saying, “I’m making a pledge for the future” before again playing him saying, “I made that pledge for that term.”

The ad again plays Feingold saying, “I’m making a pledge for the future” as the screen reads, “Russ Feingold. He says one thing. Does another.”

Johnson’s campaign said the spot is part of a “multi-million-dollar ad blitz for the fall,” and the first run is backed by coordinated funds from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.
-- By JR Ross